The House That Built Me
by kilroyactual117
Summary: When the UNSC kidnapped Linda Pravdin at the age of 6 they told her that she could never go home again, but now that the war is over she is given the opportunity to come back one, last time. She doesn't think she'll find anything on Verent, but hope that she might be able to remmeber her long lost family is enough to convince her to go home.
**AN: and here we are with another JohnxLinda story!**

 **This story was inspired in part by the song "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert and by some of the pseudoscience from hunt the truth and the Halo 5 terminals regarding glassed planets. It's also probably the longest oneshot I've ever written.**

 **Enjoy :)**

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Linda held her rifle with a white knuckle grip as her pelican descended towards the surface of the colony world Verent.

She knew she was about to make a hard drop onto rough, dangerous terrain. She was going to engage an enemy she hadn't made contact with in many years, but she feared her rifle would be useless in this engagement, and even though it had kept her alive for some any years her armor wouldn't protect her from the dangers of this place.

She knew that the battle before her would test her physically, emotionally, and mentally more than she had ever been tested before. This wasn't some run of the mill engagement where she could drop in, fire from afar, and take out her target without breaking a sweat. This was going to be an all out battle of will.

The real battle for Verent had been lost years ago. The planet had been glassed by the Covenant. All of its once proud cities had been reduced to nothing but ashes and seas of cloudy glass. This world, the place where Linda had been born, was now nothing more than a graveyard.

She remembered nothing about her upbringing or her parents. All she had to go on was the limited information ONI had kept on them. All of it was so clinical. Blood type, date of birth, medical history, and so many other things that may have been important to a researcher, but didn't bring her any closer to knowing what kind of people they had been. She wished to God that glassed planets had better records. Maybe if they did she would have been able to find some answers to the burning questions that nagged her about her parents.

Had they been kind to her? Had they treated her well? Had they loved her as a parent was supposed to love their child? Had they grieved for her death and wished for her back, longing very night to see their daughter again?

She would never know, and there was no one side of the war she could blame for that fact. The UNSC and the Covenant had both played an equal part in destroying any traces of her parent's legacy.

Even though the war had been over for her and Blue Team for many years, they had just been given access to their family files and allowed to visit their childhood homes. Not one of them had taken the offer, accept for Linda.

Somewhere inside of her a desire burned to know who she had been before the war and to learn about her past. She doubted she would find that, or anything else at the simple GPS coordinate she had been given as the location of her old family home, which had no doubt been swallowed long ago by the seas of glass, but she went anyway. She hoped against hope that something in her mind might click, and some memory of the life she had lead before would come back to her.

As she sat out the ride lost in her thoughts and visions of what her family may have been like she felt something move over her hand. She looked down to watch as John's hand slowly intertwined with her's and squeezed.

She faced him, first taking notice of the fact that he had his helmet off, which he almost never did accept when he was in armor, and that his expression displayed a bittersweet mix of sadness and joy, both equally directed at her. He seemed like he wanted to say something to her to soothe her, but as usual, his actions ended up speaking for him.

He wrapped his free arm around her and glided his hand up to her neck. He traced the outline of her Helmet's vacuum seal with his finger asking silently if he could remove it.

Personally, Linda wanted to keep it on. It would for a nice protective barrier between the world and her emotions for the hour before her that was sure to be a tidal wave of memories and hurt, but John's soft caresses as he broke the seal with his warm fingers and pressed them to her neck, giving a sharp contrast to the normally cold, clammy rubber of her body suit, made her all but give up resisting.

She closed her eyes and nodded. She sighed as John lifted the helmet from her head and a rush of cold, pressurized air from the pelican blew into her face. It chilled her and caused a slight shiver to ripple through her body. She opened her eyes and found John smiling at her as he moved his hand to rest on her forearm. Only the tips of four of his fingers were touching her, but the action was reassuring none the less. Linda leaned to her side so that their shoulder pauldrons were touching and closed her eyes for a brief moment. She felt some of the tense feeling in the pit of her stomach evaporate as she let John's reverent gaze wash over her.

When she peeled open her eyes a moment latter, Linda looked to Kelly and Fred, who both sat across from them on the other side of the pelican.

Fred smiled kindly at the two of them, although he tried to avoid looking at them directly. He looked happy for the two of them, and even tried to reach over to offer his hand for Kelly to hold.

Kelly, on the other hand, was acting as she normally did around John and Linda. She rolled her eyes dramatically at the two of them, looking dismissively at the ceiling. Despite being the most emotional Spartan on the team Kelly was decidedly not a sappy person, or at least so she let on. Had she not know Linda was in such an emotional spot she probably would have told the two of them to get a room. Not that Linda would have cared anyway.

Despite her adverse reaction to John and Linda's affections, the moment Fred's hand touched hers Linda watched as Kelly's eyes dilated and her frown formed into something a little more even. Fred's fingers laced in with hers, and Linda watched as small parts of Kelly's tough exterior peeled away and an almost imperceptible smile formed on her lips that only Fred had ever put their.

Linda broke from her momentary glance at the two other Spartans and faced back to John. He still smiled kindly at her, his attention focused on her expression more than anything.

She watched as he observed the details of her face, noting creases or small muscle movements that might indicate happiness or sadness or anger. He didn't need to ask how she was feeling. Each of them knew how to read the other like a book, and they often did when words were too difficult to form or not enough to convey what they felt.

He looked like he was trying to prepare a speech to say to give her about how everything would work out, but they both knew John had never been any good at those. Instead he sighed and leaned in to whisper to her.

"No matter what we find, it'll be alright," he said softly to her, "I promise."

His voice was still held its usual, deep, gravely tone that would terrify the average person, but Linda found it more reassuring now than any armor he could have given her.

She smiled sweetly at him and then stood and faced the rear of the pelican.

She began to mentally prepare herself for what she was about to see as she felt the dropship descending, but when they touched the ground and the door flung open Linda still felt her breath taken away at the sight of the planet.

Desolate was not nearly a strong enough word to describe the bleak scene before her. For as far as she could see the planet had been scorched into a sea of smoke tinted glass. The sky was ashen, and in the distance huge clouds swirled, filled with tiny, razor sharp shards.

It wasn't all smooth, however. She could see where the glass formed itself into waves, with large peaks cresting as low as a few inches and as high as three hundred feet in the air, like gigantic, sharpened tendrils poised to ram through anyone who even attempted to enter.

What really got to her, however, was the fully intact house standing before her, right where the coordinates marked her old family home. Linda knew that this did happened from time to time. During a glassing, pockets of air could protect certain parts of the landscape from being obliterated by the flash-cooling glass around it, leaving eerily preserved relics of former colonies strewn about both above and below the glass.

She glanced around the sea of glass and noticed the foundations and walls of several other houses jutting out from beneath it. None appeared quite as intact as hers, but she was amazed that any of this had survived. It truly was some kind of sick, twisted miracle.

Linda began to wonder if the old wives tale about Spartans being lucky was true, and then she began to wonder if this was luck, or a curse.

The house was charred and blackened. It's second story had seen better days after being ripped apart by the storms. All of the window panes were shattered, and some had had their frames ripped completely free. Its foundation was unstable, and it had a very noticeable rightward slant from where it had sunk into the patch of charred, slightly preserved dirt around it. All around the house were waves of glass that had been created by an air pocket, culminating above it and coming to sharp points about twenty feet above the top of the roof creating a reflective dome around the structure that, had Linda not known any better, she would have described as beautiful.

How in all this destruction and tragedy had her home alone been preserved? She glanced around to see if anything else was left of her former home town, but other than a few patches of malnourished soil and some small sections of concrete nothing else was left.

For a moment, Linda felt frozen in time, her heart beating against her chest loudly as she examined the scene, and then slowly she willed her feet to step off the pelican and onto the glass, making a hard cracking sound as her heavy boot met the surface and then a crunching sound as it ground the splinters to dust.

Kelly walked up beside her out of the corner of her eye, a look of utter shock on her face. She turned to face Linda and bit her lip, unsure of what to say or if to say anything. Despite the fact that the two of them seemed to be able to argue about something at even the most inopportune times, right now both Spartan sisters let their differences aside.

Kelly placed a comforting hand on Linda's shoulder and swiped a Spartan smile across her sister's face. Linda could tell the smile was forced. Her eyes were hard and her face taught with stress, but it was still a sweet gesture.

"Welcome home," she said softly, squeezing her sister's shoulder to reassure her.

Linda forced a pained smile and swiped a Spartan smile across Kelly's face as well. Linda closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to slowly walk towards the structure, listening to the subtle, crack, crunch, crack, crunch of her boots hitting the ground.

By time she reached the front door the building seemed impossibly tall, almost like it was looming over her. Her hand shook as she reached out to touch the door handle. She began to turn it slowly but stopped half way.

For a moment she questioned if she even wanted to do this. Her training had been painful enough. What if she couldn't handle remembering what had come before it?

She turned around and found John standing behind her, with Fred and Kelly standing off on either side of him. Fred made a motion to Kelly for them to move away, and they both did, leaving John and Linda to themselves. Once Fred and Kelly were out of view, John's normally piercing blue eyes became much softer as he offered a hand to her, which she took readily, squeezed down on with all of her strength, and tried to accept John's reassurance that everything would be alright.

Linda closed her eyes, faced the door, opened them as she let out a deep breath, and then began to turn the handle.

The door made a scraping sound as it opened, it's frame warped from years of neglect, and slowly Linda stepped through into her home's front room.

Shafts of light lanced through the room from every direction, coming from every crack and crevice that had been torn through the house by glass storms. Eerie shadows cast themselves across the room where the shafts of light met walls and furniture, giving the house the appearance of a forest lit by a soft moonlight. Pieces of destroyed and flipped furniture, broken glass, and dust littered the floor. Based on the fireplace and relics of old couches that were smashed against the wall, this had once been a living room.

Despite the fact that she barely recognized it as a home, somehow this place felt eerily familiar to her. At first glance, all of it looked destroyed, but as Linda looked over the fireplace mantle, she found a few things had managed to stay in place.

A two trifold flags, one from the UEG and one from the CMA, a wooden pistol case, and a single picture frame, it's pane clouded in dust, sat bolted in place to some of the last facets of undamaged dry wall in the room. Linda leaned forward and brushed some dust away from the flag's cases, revealing two perfectly folded flags with hardly a scratch on them. Small plaques beneath them read _"Staff Sergeant Zachary Pravdin, UNSC Marine Corps. Honorably discharged December tenth 2510,"_ and _, "Captain Emilia Pravdin, CMA Airforce. Honorably discharged December tenth 2513."_

The words didn't conjure up any painful memories, but she did feel a hint of familiarity about the way the names Zachary Pravdin and Emilia Pravdin rolled across her tongue. She knew they were her parents names, she had read as much in her ONI dossier, but now that she stood before an article of them the names seemed to come to life before her, revealing their history as she slowly repeated them, feeling out how the syllables slid off her tongue.

Her hand moved over to the pistol case. She unlatched it and removed a single M6C service pistol, taking it into her hand and getting a feel for her father's weapon. She rolled it over in her hand and examined it. The air sealed case had kept it preserved from the glass storms, but the marks of holster wear and paint scratches from use tarnished its finish slightly.

This weapon hadn't just been kept by her father, it had been used by him.

She thought long and hard about how the weapon felt in her hand. She had handled many weapons like this in her career, but this one was different.

A short memory flashed through her mind of her holding it. She had been young, but this hadn't been during her training. She was in an indoor shooting range, a gentle hand was on her shoulder, and another on her forearm as she confidently held the weapon out in front of her.

 _"Alright. Squeeze the trigger, just like I taught you,"_ she heard a gentle voice say, a voice that somewhere in her deep memory she recognized as her father's.

Linda didn't hesitate. She squeezed the trigger gently, and the gun kicked against her hand, the recoil dampeners absorbing most of the muzzle flip. She remembered how the crack of the weapon excited her and how the shell had seemed to eject from the chamber in slow motion as the slide slid back, clicked against the frame, and returned to battery.

She slowly lowered the weapon, and found that the round had struck dead center in the middle of the silhouette target's head, right between the eyes, a killing blow.

She smiled a wicked smile and turned to face her dad, who gently took the weapon and ruffled her hair, his soft features and calm, brown eyes shining with pride as he laughed slightly.

 _"Keep that up and you'll be a sniper one day,"_ he said happily.

As the memory faded, Linda felt the weight of the rifle on her back increase significantly under the weight of her father's prediction.

She took the weapon and magnetized it to her right hip so it could join her other service handgun, and then picked up the flags. She placed them in a small, hard sided case she had decided to carry with her. Normally she wouldn't be one to hold onto things like these, but not taking them felt just as wrong. They were the only things that remained of a life these two people had built.

Lastly, she reached for the photograph, gently brushing dust and ash from the glass pane to reveal it.

Slowly an image of a family of three revealed itself. Linda was standing next to her father, who was holding a sign that read "welcome home," and smiling brightly. Next to Linda was her mother, dressed in her flight suit and survival rig, her helmet clutched under her left arm and Linda wrapped tightly in her right.

Linda was struck by just how closely she resembled her mother. The hue of her red hair matched Linda's exactly, and her pair of bright, piercing green eyes shown just as brightly as hers once had, before the war and all.

She felt a warm feeling inside as the memory of that day drifted back to her. It was feint, much more feint than her memory of her father, but it was still poignant.

She remembered watching her mother's falcon aircraft landing and seeing her jump out of the pilot's seat, peeling off her helmet and letting her hair fall to either side of her face. Linda ran toward her, shouting her name and smiling widely, her arms outstretched to hug her mother.

 _"Linda!"_ Said her mother gleefully, a smile crossing her face as she knelt down to receive her.

When Linda reached her mother she wrapped her arms around her and nestled her head into the warm fabric of her flight suit, holding her tightly and placing a kiss on the top of her head.

 _"I missed you so much,"_ she said gently.

A moment latter her father joined them and wrapped her arms around the both of them, giving her mother a quick kiss. For a moment Linda felt like a part of a family just as she had with Blue Team. Even as the memory faded away she still held a smile on her face.

She picked up the photo and placed it in her rucksack before turning around to face John. She had almost forgotten he was standing there.

John smiled at the grin on her face, but stood back unsure of wether or not to approach her.

Linda walked up to him and slowly intertwined her hand with his, smiling at him.

She handed him the photograph and he accepted it gingerly. He looked it over for a moment, examining it with a fine tooth comb. Maybe he was remembering his parents. With John you could never really be sure. Whatever he was thinking caused a heart warming look to cross his face that lasted until he handed it back.

"Your family?" He asked, a smile on his face.

She nodded and dropped her head, still thinking long and hard about them.

"I remember them, I think," she said, her voice quiet.

John squeezed her hand reassuringly, and she recounted the memory to him in all its detail. John listened and said nothing.

When she finished he placed a quick kiss on her lips, and the paused seemingly waiting to say or do something, but what to say or what to do seemed completely lost on him.

"Your parents were beautiful," he said finally after a moment.

He paused and then added, "you were beautiful."

Linda smiled. There was little John had ever described as beautiful in his life. She was certain that she and Cortana were the only ones that had ever heard him say the word.

She tugged on his hand and pulled him towards what had used to be the kitchen. The room was even more dusty and covered in ash than the rest if the house.

Linda knelt down and blew gently against the kitchen floor, kicking up a small cloud of dust and revealing the white plasteel of the kitchen floor. She stood and surveyed the counter tops. Most of them were empty with thick clumps of dust covering them. The kitchen table in the middle of the spacious room was completely intact. It was probably the only piece of furniture left standing in the house.

Linda walked forward and placed a hand on the table. She closed her eyes and fought to remember how this room had used to look.

A memory drifted into her head of a time when she was a young child. She remembered dashing in through the back door, wearing her backpack as though she had just come home from school.

Her mother was leaning against the counter, holding a cup of coffee. The moment she saw Linda she sat it down on the counter and knelt down, letting Linda run into her embrace.

Her mother picked her up and set her on the counter, smiling at her.

 _"Did you have a good day at school today sweetie?"_ She asked.

Linda nodded, but her gaze didn't meet her mother's. She was looking over at her father, who sat at a computer terminal not far away. Linda looked at him with a puzzled expression for a moment, before turning back to her mother.

 _"Mommie, how did you meet daddy?"_ She asked.

Her mother smiled fondly and looked over to her dad. She reached over to a nearby shelf and pulled down a picture of the two of them. Her mother was wearing a beautiful red dress that hugged her form well, and her father was in his dress blues, a wide smile on his face as he held the camera out in front of him with one arm, and wrapped his other arm around her mother.

 _"We met on leave on Algolis,"_ she said, a certain nostalgia about her tone, _"back then the CMA and the UNSC didn't get along, but your father was charming and sweet, and..."_

Before her mother could finish, her father cut in wrapped his arm around her, placing a kiss on her lips.

 _"...and no woman can resist a Marine in uniform,"_ he said with a cocky smile.

Her mother rolled her eyes.

 _"Oh, so I'm the one that married up all of a sudden?"_ She said in a mocking tone.

Her father seemed ready to respond, but her mother didn't give him a chance. She pressed her lips to his in a heated kiss, and then shoved him away playfully.

 _"Get back to work grunt,"_ she said with a wicked smile.

Linda closed her eyes tight and stuck out her tongue at both of them.

 _"Ewwww!"_ She said with disgust, _"that's gross."_

Linda squeezed John's hand as the memory ended, and let go of her death grip on the table. She pulled him to a nearby staircase, that strained bellow their feet as they ascended to the second story of the house.

When they reached the second story Linda paused and surveyed the damage.

Half of the roof had been torn clean off, leaving a gaping hole that gave a vantage point for viewing the endless sea of glass. The only parts of the second floor that remained intact were a hallway with two empty door frames to mark where rooms had once been, and one door at the end of the hall that lead to a room that, by some stroke of luck, hadn't been ripped clean off with the rest of the second story.

She and John treaded carefully as approached the room, trying their best to not cause the floor to collapse, and then slowly opened the old, partially stuck door to gain entry.

The room was better preserved than most of the house. A single bed and a dresser still remained intact, although based on the scorch marks that surrounded the room both the bed sheets and the contents of the dresser had caught fire and been vaporized. Several other partially destroyed pieces of furniture littered the room as well, although Linda could only guess as to what their purpose had been.

Linda closed her eyes and tried to conjure up a memory of the room, and like a wildfire many of them came flooding back.

Most were quick flashes of her life before. An images of her reading, doing homework, and even just sleeping. In all of the restless years she had spent as a spartan she had forgotten just how good real, uninterrupted sleep could feel.

She thought about tying to lay down on the bed, and maybe recapture some of the cathartic feeling of deep sleep, even if it was only for a moment, but she knew that the rickety, we'd framed bed would crack under the weight of her and her armor. It was sad really. She hadn't just been robbed of an experience of a childhood, but now that she had finally been allowed to recapture a few moments of it the rest it had promised still eluded her. She wasn't designed to rest like she had in those days. She had been rebuilt from,the ground up to kill without a break.

Determined to take some comfort in finally retuning to the only, truly quite place she had ever know, she let go of John's hand and laid down on the floor next to her bed. She closed her eyes and folded her hands over her abdomen as she allowed one last memory to wash over her. As it began, she barely recognized the sound of John laying down next to her.

She was in her room sitting with her legs folded as she stared expectantly at the door, waiting patiently for her mother and father to arrive. Before the glassing her room had been painted cool tones of blue, and the walls were lined with book shelves piled high with books of all kinds.

Books were one of the few things she indulged in to take her mind off of combat. They trained her to be patient, and to look for minor details in the plot. Evidently it had been a past time of hers for a lot longer than she remembered.

Linda glanced over to the door once again, and watched as her mother walked down the walkway and entered her room slowly, a bright smile on her face. She flipped off the light and walked over to Linda's bedside, kneeling down next to her and smiling at her gently.

 _"Hey sweetie. Are you ready for bed?"_ She asked.

Linda shook her head and frowned. She heard footsteps approaching and watched as her father entered the room as well, kneeling down next to her mother and placing a hand on her shoulder.

 _"I don't want to go to sleep daddy,"_ complained Linda as she flopped back onto the bed, her red hair spreading like a halo of fire over her mattress, _"I'm not tired."_

Linda's mother looked to her father and smiled mischievously. They both stood, and Linda's mother reached down to touch her side teasingly, causing her to squirm and laugh as she tickled her.

 _"Well, we could always tire you out,"_ suggested her father.

Linda's eyes went wide, and instantly she knew what they were planning. Her father began to tickle her other side, but she was too fast for either of them. She dashed out of the room and down into the kitchen, deftly leaping up onto the counter and climbing high into a cupboard where she was certain her parents would never find her.

When they entered the room they began to look for her, calling out her name and lifting furniture, opening windows, and even opening drawers to see if she had chosen such an obscure place to hide.

After checking each and every one of the lower cupboards her parents finally moved to look at the highest level of the kitchen.

When she realized she was about to be found out she lowered herself from the cupboard and to the floor and set her feet down on the floor as quiet as a ghost.

She slowly snuck up behind her father, being sure not to make any noise until she was right behind him, then she jumped up onto him, grabbing onto his head and holding on for dear life as he recoiled in surprise.

Linda's mother burst out laughing, and her father father stopped moving after a moment, allowing Linda to rest on his shoulders as she breathed heavily from exhaustion.

 _"I got you daddy,"_ she said triumphantly.

She began to feel tired however, tired enough that she could almost have fallen asleep right there while she was hanging onto her father's head. He lifted her off of him and brought her into his arms, cradling her gently against his chest.

 _"I think that's enough for one day? What do you think?"_ He asked as she closed her eyes.

Linda nodded, and her father pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

 _"Goodnight Linda,"_ he said.

She heard the creaking of wooden steps as her father carried her up the stairs and to her room, and the moment she hit the pillow she fell into a deep sleep, but her slumber didn't last long. Even at a young age she wasn't a heavy sleeper, so when she heard the door to her room opening she was instantly awakened and ready to see who had entered. What she found however, wasn't at all what she expected.

Men in black uniforms wearing night vision goggles, gas masks, black plate carriers, helmets, and holding suppressed carbines dashed through the door and surrounded her, grabbing a hold of her and pinning her to the bed. She caught a brief glimpse of the embroidered patch on one of their shoulders. It was an ominous image of an all seeing eye with the words _Office Of Naval Intelligence_ written around it.

Linda screamed loudly and bit down on one of her captor's hands causing him to let go in pain and drop her.

She wriggled free of the other agent's hands, and dropped to the floor. She dashed out of the room and towards her parent's room as quickly as she could.

 _"Get the little bitch,"_ yelled one of the agents.

She pushed herself faster, running as quickly as she could across the hallway and to her parent's room. They must have been expecting her to try to escape, However, because one of the agents was already posted at the door waiting for her to run into him.

Linda narrowly avoided his attempt to grab her and ran for her life down the stairs. Panic settled over her as she realized no one was coming to help her. They had already gotten to her parents. She was on her own, a lone wolf like she had been her entire life.

Linda ran for the only vestige of safety she had left, the dark, back corner of her house's kitchen cabinet.

As she was about to scramble up and close the door behind her, she heard a sharp voice behind her yell out for her.

 _"Go for less than lethal,"_ It said sharply.

A moment latter she felt two sharp pricks in her back, and then she convulsed in pain as five thousand volts of electricity arced through her. At first it felt like a sharp pain, and then numbness, and then it felt like she might just pass out.

She let go of the cabinet and began to fall. She didn't reach the kitchen counter top and crack her head like she expected to. She just kept falling. She fell through so much blackness that it became hard to remember she had ever seen anything else.

Pained tears formed on her brave, six-year-old cheeks.

She felt like she would never escape this free fall until she finally began to hear a voice in the distance calling her name. It began quietly, but slowly it increased in intensity until she felt two strong hands grasping her on either shoulder and the familiar weight of armor on her chest, and threw her eyes open to find John looking at her with pained concern.

"Linda," he called out one last time, "what happened."

She tried to respond but couldn't. Her expression was wracked with pain and she was crying like she had never cried before. The tears that streamed down her face were so hot that she began to think they might burn straight through her skin. She buried her head into John's armored shoulder and let the tears run over the metal of his armor as she let loose a torrent of emotion.

She remembered it all now. She remembered her parents loving arms, their kind words, and their sweet kisses, but she also remembered how her heart had been torn in two when she was ripped from them, and how she had become so detached and obsessed with the program that she had forgotten she was still a living, breathing being with a soul.

A strong, gloved, armored hand came to rest on the back of her head as she continued to cry. Gently it began to rub the back of her neck, and before long it was accompanied by sweet kisses trailed over the part of her hair that soothed her as she tried to recover from her hysteria.

"It's ok Linda," she heard John say against her hair, "I've got you, I promise."

She believed every word he said.

The way John treated her was in no way like how he treated any other situation. He would have never indulged himself so deeply in anything else but her, pressed so many comforting kisses to anything or anyone but her.

When he felt his lips press to hers she feel into the familiar oh so gentle feeling of him kissing her. It was always so gentle, like she was made of paper. He didn't give her the abuse she was designed to take that everyone, friendly or not, seemed ready to give just because she was willing to accept it. He treasured every second of having her in his arms, and he comforting her as a personal mission in which failure was not an option.

Their armor separated them, but she briefly considered using all the augmented strength she had to sheer his chest plate in two just so that she could feel more of him.

He dried her tears and kissed away a pain he couldn't see or fight while Linda took a silent moment to process what she had just seen. Being ripped away from something like that felt like a gut punch that had happened twenty years ago, but that had cracked a rib and never really faded. It stung of betrayal and grief, and it burned like it was going to eat her alive.

She tried to focus on the warm feeling of John's hands against her neck, but she only cried harder the more she thought about it. Eventually she resigned and let her self cry. She let herself mourn the life she had had before now that the war was over and there was time for mourning.

It was a good, long while before Linda could speak again.

"Thank you," she said when she could finally form coherent sentences.

John smiled, and she reached down to tap her wrist gauntlet. It sent a signal to Kelly and Fred that they could come in.

John held her tight to his chest while they waited for them. It was embarrassing to be seen like this, but after that memory she couldn't bring herself to care.

She wondered when she had lost her self control. A few years ago she would have felt guilty and weak for crying like that, and probably would have beat herself up over it for a week, but learning that feeling was not, in fact, the end of the world had made moments like these so much more bearable for her.

When Fred and Kelly arrived they knelt down next to her placing hands on her shoulders as she let her head slump forward. She heard her brother murmur his apologies while she felt her sister squeeze her shoulder gently.

"We're here for you Linda," she heard John say, "always."

Linda smiled and looked up at the faces of her brother, her sister, and her lover, and then to the room that surrounded her.

She knew that at one time this house had ben where she lived, and that the people here had loved her dearly and cared for her. For that she would be forever grateful. In spite of that, and how angry she was at being ripped away from it all at such a young age, she knew that she had been meant to end up where she was right now.

At one point in time she had been Linda Pravdin, but now, for better or for worse, she was Linda-058, and Blue Team was her family.


End file.
